Hi Gunnar, Kristina and all,
Thanks Gunnar and Kristina for your feedback.
It was something different I was suggesting. Must try to improve my
explanations!
From a different angle, some issues in design theory can be seen as:
1. Many 'theories' in design research are better seen as something other
than theories. That is, they do not have the form of theories. For example,
some are data, some are standards, some are findings of research tests, some
are guidelines, some are folk stories, some are associations.
2. Many design theories that have the form of theories are false,
inadequate, unproven, underdefined. A common characteristic are theories
that tacitly presume and depend on a 'taken for granted' context. This
matters when they are presumed to apply outside that context without
realising they were only valid within the context. Without good theory
making this is difficult to see because the dependence on the context isn't
mentioned in the theory. (This applies also to those theories that are
better regarded as data). An example is the statement that ' water boils at
100degrees centigrade'. It doesn't. The statement assumes the persons doing
the boiling are at sea level with an air pressure of 1 bar. Boiling
temperature reduces with pressure. As a theory it's in adequate if it
doesn't include pressure. The boiling point of water varies by over 30dgrees
centigrade at different points on the earth. The same type of problem
occurs in many design theories.
3. Design activity does not include everything. It is important to work out
what is the best way to use the term Design to minimise confusion and its
negative effects that are currently commonplace and compromise the
professionalising of activities of designers and design researchers.
4. Design activity occurs in hundreds of different fields. To date, theory
development has been isolationist. An important question now is how to
arbitrage design theory and research findings between design fields. This is
especially important to avoid waste of research resources. Currently, design
fields new to research are having the same research and theory problems
that engineering design fields resolved 50 years ago.
5. In design, there is a theory mess in the literature that is ongoing.
Getting out of this mess requires radical change to how theory is understood
and theorymaking undertaken in many Design fields.
6. It's fairly obvious that design theory making in any design field will
have to address the following issues: a) How we chose bits and name them
(the subsystem problem relating to how we conceive and label reality), b)
how we model how bits of things behave, c) how we make theories about how
people choose things, d) theories about the internal processes of designers
and users, e)How we bring a) to d) together into integrated general
theories of design, f) the epistemological perspectives we use that
underpin the theoretical detail and structure of design theory paths of e),
g) the ontological positions, including human values, that underpin
theories in a) to f). Different pathways through this mix are different
approaches to theorising about design.
7. Doing the validity stuff about theory making that Ken's posts addressed.
None of the above was what my recent posts were about.
I was taken all of the above as given and old hat. It has been so for a
couple of decades.
My current posts were going beyond this into exploring establishing coherent
approaches for the theory foundations necessary for design optimisation in
areas of complex design that designers and design researchers have not yet
been particularly good at.
Typical design problems at this scale are designing interventions for Iraq
and Afghanistan, designing new national health systems, developing good
addiction management interventions at a large scale social level, developing
interventions to provide better alternatives than corruption, developing
interventions to reduce social and individual developmental problems caused
by media, developing improved forms of education.
A challenge:
How would you make design theory about optimising the design of a
replacement for the university system worldwide?
This is a problem involving people, technology, development, national
identities, economic development, the future of knowledge and a host of
other issues.
The theory foundations of design research should be able to address these
sort of design contracts.
I'm asking what kind of theory foundations do we need?
Best wishes,
Terry
Gunnar wrote>
Is there anything that has to do with functioning that is not design?
Is there related functioning that should not be improved?
Terry seemed to be making a connection between "emotional design" and
"engineering design" but wasn't clear what the connection was. I
inferred that the connection was the "design" part and that he meant
to imply that all "design" is one thing. For that to have any meaning,
we would have to assume that there is a lot of "not design" that is
not that one thing.
And he did not merely imply that there were connections between
various sorts of design. He called for an overarching theory. Terry
has also recently dismissed various sorts of design that don't fit his
notion of what is interesting or important about design. This seems to
add up to
1) Design is all one.
2) The all one is defined by one specific cluster of design fields or
specific set of interests.
Unless we make this into a strict definition and then try to enforce
court orders enjoining those that fall outside our tautology from use
of the word "design," I think it's incumbent on those who insist that
only overarching theories of design are worthy of our attention to at
least be clear about what we're theorizing.
It would be great if theories of emotional design and engineering
design were connected but, as you indicate, they might also connect
with theories of sociology, cognitive psych, etc. If someone reacted
to a statement about politics by asking how it connected Newtonian
physics and theater criticism, wouldn't we tend to reply with
something akin to "Huh?"? So let me rephrase my earlier post:
Huh?
Unless we're hoping for the Unified Theory of Everything, what's up
with all of this insistence on design hypermetatheorizing? I can't
understand why we should dismiss, say, a useful statement about the
dark by saying that it doesn't unify nightclubs, night soil, the
conduct of basketball coaches, chess pieces that can move in a L
shape, early Ingmar Bergman films, David Hasselhoff television shows
about talking cars, the investment strategies of the Knight Capital
Group, and the manufacturing of night vision goggles.
Gunnar
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On Apr 30, 2010, at 7:16 AM, Kristina Börjesson wrote:
> Dear Gunnar.
> Shouldn't all designed products, material or immaterial, be aimed at
> improved functioning, which must encompass [design] theories which
> considers as well body as mind?
> Isn't this exactly the problem we are often facing, not least what
> concerns design for sustainability, that theories within i.e.
> environmental engineering are not configured/does not connect to theories
> within sociology, cognitive psychology etc.
> Best wishes
> Kristina
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gunnar Swanson"
> <[log in to unmask]
> >
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 2:40 AM
> Subject: Re: A new field of design research
>
>
>> On Apr 29, 2010, at 8:22 PM, Terence Love wrote:
>>> I wonder how you would see it as connecting theories of say emotional
>>> design
>>> and engineering design?
>>
>> Is there a reason to assume that theories of emotional design and
>> engineering design should be connected (beyond any assumptions that
>> everything is connected)?
>>
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